Plato was a Greek philosopher, born to an aristocratic
family in the year 427 BCE and died in the year 347 BCE. There are many notable
facts about Plato including that he was the pupil of Socrates and the tutor of
Aristotle. His fame does not end with his association with other esteemed philosophers
with his time, but includes his many contributions to philosophy and science. Among
his most notable contributions are: The Republic, The Academy, and his theory
of forms.
Socrates, who was known as “the gadfly” for his incessant questioning
of authority, was the tutor of Plato. Although Plato’s philosophical journey
did not start with Socrates, he certainly did make a name for himself in his
dialogues concerning Socrates. Because Socrates questioned the effectiveness of
teaching and doubted that we can teach anything at all, he never transcribed
his theories for the edification of us all. However, in the spirit of
questioning authority and societal norms, Plato took it upon himself to correct
the flaws he perceived in society and wrote The Republic. Perhaps his greatest
contribution to his time and certainly ours was and is the Republic. The
Republic is a collection of conversations dialogues meant to convey
philosophical ideals. His ultimate intent was to establish the ideal state. In
this case, a republic, which simply means, “public thing(or matter)”. Plato –
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end
up being governed by your inferiors.”
Unlike his predecessor, Plato believed that wisdom could be
attained not only from contemplation but also from teaching. In 387 B.C. Plato
founded the Academy. It was a place of teaching, research, and discussion, and
drew pupils from many parts of the known world. One of which was the well know
philosopher, Aristotle. The Academy served a precursor to the “school movement”
of the fourth century B.C. and contributed to the development of contemporary
schools and universities… like MTSU.
One of Plato’s most influential theories in philosophy is
the theory of forms. A useful tool for explaining his theory was the Allegory of the cave. The cave represents what we can perceive with our senses which does not begin to show what really is.This theory asserts that there is a physical realm of
imperfection that is always changing, and a spiritual realm of perfect and
never changing forms. These forms, as he refers to them as, are abstract ideas that
transcend the physical world around us, but also unite them. It is more or less
an image of perfection, and what Plato strove for.
Plato said,“love is a serious mental disease”. We are all
familiar with the term platonic love. It
means we are not in a romantic relationship. True, but the meaning goes far
beyond that as you may have guessed by what Plato said about love. The meaning
has more to do with rising through levels of wisdom and truth. It all began
with Socrates in the “Symposium”, which is a collection of speeches on the
nature of love, in which he states, ”the best thing to do with romantic desire
is to convert it into amicable truth-seeking.” Later, in the 15th
century a Florentine scholar coined the term amor platonicus, which is latin
for platonic love.
… And I will leave you with my favorite alleged quote of
Socrates, “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
Comments:
“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”
ReplyDelete― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
Vonnegut was goofing, of course its better to reflect and ponder... but we've all had our "clunker" days, haven't we? Maybe more lately.